The Sorensen Monologues

To be clear, my intention here is not to say that refugees necessarily lead to fascism. Rather, it’s hyperbolic, inflammatory rhetoric about migrants that leads there. Without irresponsible right-wing media demonizing entire groups of people round the clock, I suspect the national conversation would look a bit different.

U.S. foreign policy has unfortunately played into the creation of some of these very refugees. With the Iraq War, we destabilized a whole region and opened up a power vacuum filled by terrorist movements. Then there’s been decades of US involvement in Central America, also not unrelated to current migrants fleeing violence.

While I’ve seen some news stories about women voters, there’s been nowhere near the same adulation and obsessive fawning as there was over male Trump voters in 2016. The very notion of “authenticity” is gendered male, and Dem-voting women are not seen as “real” Americans by many in the media.

Finally taking a break from politics this week. In the early days of social media, it seemed a notification was a notification. Someone mentioned you or tagged you in a photo, you got pinged, and that was that. Over the past couple years or so, I’ve noticed both Facebook and Twitter desperately throwing random notifications into the mix about various friends’ activities. I’m getting Facebook alerts about people I don’t know commenting on posts written by people I don’t know. Once in a while, Twitter burps up some obnoxious little nudge informing me that someone has tweeted, or liked a tweet. Now, before people write me with advice about changing my settings, let me assure you I have tried everything humanly possible. At least in some cases, YOU CAN’T TURN THEM OFF. (I realize this is hardly the biggest problem in the world right now, but it’s fun to complain about.)

A bit late posting here as I’m traveling abroad. I had to draw this one before the election results, but given what happened in Georgia, it’s still unfortunately relevant. Gerrymandering and other voter suppression efforts have gotten so extreme now that Democrats must win by huge margins to actually, you know, win. Things have gotten so bad that elections have become about whether to keep what little democracy we have left. We are in an emergency situation for our country, yet many media outlets spent the week before the election obsessing over the non-story of the “caravan.” If anything, voter suppression efforts should be receiving that kind of breathless coverage.

The specific issue with Native American voting rights I’m referring to in panel four is described here.

Sometimes I can’t believe the things I have to draw cartoons about these days. When I began the weekly strip some eighteen years ago or so, I never imagined I’d be making the case against fascism in America. It felt like the dam broke this past week, that whatever was holding back an explosion of violent nutballery that’s been waiting in the wings is now gone. All I can do is try to point out the obvious, that these acts are the culmination of decades of over-the-top conspiracy theorizing and incitement on the American right. And no amount of being “nicer” or more “open-minded” is going to change things.

In previous cartoons, I have dealt with the folly of giving fascists and roundly-discredited racial theorists prestigious speaking platforms — such as Steve Bannon headlining the New Yorker ideas festival — and made the case that it is not “closed-minded” to object to such norm-violating appointments. Here I take on the same basic topic from another angle: if fascists and racists must be treated as part of serious contemporary intellectual debate, as some insist, surely there must be some point when the debate is over? If not, then it follows that there’s no way to ever condemn a set of ideas or come to any conclusions. An analog would be people who want endless “debate” over climate change, long after scientific consensus has been established. The Bannons and climate deniers of the world are free to speak their nonsense, but rehashing it endlessly leads absolutely nowhere.

This has been one of those weeks for me. I broke my phone, then someone smashed my car window and stole a bag containing my scanner (fortunately I had my computer), all my art supplies, and a book about birding… probably not the haul they were expecting. So I’ve been a little stressed. Luckily, this “classic” strip was easily updated for the horrific situation in Georgia, where Kemp is taking voter suppression to new extremes.

The GOP has become absolutely brazen about ignoring basic democratic principles. It’s all very frightening and makes it all the more imperative that those of us who can still vote do in fact vote.

In other news, I contributed a couple illustrations to this book, along with many other political cartoonists.

A week ago someone asked me what I thought the odds were of Kavanaugh being confirmed. This was when many people thought his nomination was doomed. I said 10:1 he will be confirmed. My read all along has been that there is simply no mechanism left to stop Republican lawlessness.They simply do not care about any of the standards that matter in a normal democracy. Perjury doesn’t matter, evidence of sexual assault doesn’t matter, thousands of law professors signing a letter saying that he is not qualifed doesn’t matter. And here we are.

I have noted before that the Trump era is often difficult to parody because it is already so extreme, and nothing illustrates this better than the Kavanaugh hearings. The man is a serial liar, and it’s not at all hard to prove. His laughable explanations for the slang terms he used in his high school yearbook are such obvious hogwash, it’s like he wasn’t even trying to be plausible. The thing is, these weren’t just little lies — they were directly related to his history of binge drinking and his attitudes toward women in high school and college. Whatever his behavior then, he’s lying now, and should be nowhere near a position of power that involves evaluating evidence.

There is a darkly entertaining article about a gay punk who was unfortunate enough to share Kavanaugh’s dorm at Yale. If Kavanaugh is confirmed, I’m afraid we will all be that guy.

I can hardly stand to watch the reactions of the powers that be to Kavanaugh’s accusers, who are putting their lives at risk to speak out. It’s excruciating to see these women get slimed — and I’m not even experiencing this as a survivor of sexual assault. They are heroes in my book, even if they’re reluctant ones. After reading about the Yale allegations last night, I was imagining all the preparations these people have to go through before they tell their stories — lawyering up, steeling themselves against an overwhelming public backlash via every means of communication imaginable. It occurred to me that it must feel like preparing for war.

We know Kavanaugh has lied multiple times under oath. Meanwhile, his accuser has passed an FBI polygraph test, can point to evidence in her therapist’s notes from 2012, and contacted the Washington Post before Kavanaugh was even nominated by Trump (so this is not an “eleventh-hour” accusation). Why should anyone believe him when he accuses her of lying? He’s lost any claim to credibility.

In case anyone is wondering who the woman in the cartoon is, that’s supposed to be Kavanaugh’s wife, since the spouse usually holds the Bible during the oath of office ceremony.